1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to disk drives, and more particularly to a disk drive including an airflow blocker with a planar portion extending from a blocker arm portion.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The typical hard disk drive includes a disk drive base, a head disk assembly (HDA), and a printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) attached to the disk drive base. The head disk assembly includes at least one magnetic disk, a spindle motor for rotating the disk, and a head stack assembly (HSA) having an actuator assembly having at least one transducer head, typically several, for reading and writing data from the disk. The printed circuit board assembly includes a servo control system in the form of a disk controller for generating servo control signals. The head stack assembly is controllably positioned in response to the generated servo control signals from the disk controller. In so doing, the attached heads are moved relative to tracks disposed upon the disk.
A topic of concern is the desire to reduce the effects of airflow generated within the disk drive due to rotation of the disks. Of particular concern is the occurrence of turbulent airflow which may tend to excite a resonance response of the actuator assembly. This results in an increase in the percent off-track values of the associated head. Further, such disk rotation induced airflow may result in a force applied to the actuator assembly, i.e., windage. Further, such disk rotation induced airflow may result in vibration of the disk or disk flutter. In addition, it is contemplated that the disk rotation induced airflow tends to become turbulent radially beyond the outer disk edges due to boundary layer separation occurring within various cavities within the disk drive. Such turbulent airflow further tends to impact the resonance response of the actuator assembly and disk flutter. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an improved disk drive for mitigation of such disk rotation induced airflow in comparison to the prior art.